


Appellation

by KirishiMom



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/F, M/M, Temporary Character Death, The Author Cried Like A Little Girl Writing This, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, also KiyoYachi, basically the asanoya kimi no na wa au that nobody wanted, except me, i wanted this AU and now you all have to suffer through it, there's some DaiSuga in there towards the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 23:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20683376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirishiMom/pseuds/KirishiMom
Summary: Time is the longest distance between two places. -Tennessee Williams





	Appellation

**Author's Note:**

> For [Avery](https://twitter.com/trashfornaomasa), who inspires me, cheers me on, challenges me, and lifts me up when I'm down.
> 
> For [Reon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falqner/pseuds/falqner), who is always willing to write impromptu angst with me and scream about our latest hyperfixations.
> 
> For [Star](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TautochroneGrave/pseuds/TautochroneGrave), who dragged me into AsaNoya hell and then exposed my horrible writing to a room full of shippers.
> 
> Anyway, [this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1CkkRODlD9I2iaSEJft35J?si=l1co6HP2Q_KdHgtop-g6eg) is the playlist I listened to while writing this fic. It's not in any particular order, but feel free to give it a listen while you read. I also have a cutesy [AsaNoya playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4x73zssty5HY1CZH70UzqU?si=FNReAdxPQWqmijXozOlckA).
> 
> Edit 09/18/2019: Now with some absolutely [AMAZING ART](https://twitter.com/CelesMochi/status/1174336218915426304) by [Red](https://twitter.com/CelesMochi) on twitter!

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

~ Tennessee Williams, _The Glass Menagerie _~

Asahi never wanted to believe in the magic he grew up learning about—the rituals, the shrine, the _traditions_. He didn’t want to believe his mother’s soft voice whispering _Musubi won’t let our threads unravel too much, dear heart,_ because it would give him a reason to _hope_, a reason to think that maybe she hadn’t died for nothing—that maybe his family wasn’t fractured for nothing. No, Asahi longs for busy streets, cute cafés locked between the pages of magazines, and too-fast trains for too-fast lives. Instead, he’s confined to a small town with a small population, where everyone knows his name and what he does after school every day.

His mother speaks softly in his memories before she leaves. His father speaks softly too, right up until his mother leaves, and then suddenly he doesn’t. Suddenly he is loud and brash and cursing at Nana and cursing the Azumane shrine. His exit seems inevitable, after that. Asahi’s mother doesn’t leave of her own choosing—is taken too soon by a sickness she can’t control. But his father leaves of his own accord, throws away tradition and rituals and family—and for all that he only moves across town, he’s never felt as far away and unreachable as he does now.

Asahi deals with it in his own way—by growing out his hair despite his father hollering at him in the middle of town during election season, by making braided cords to keep his hands busy, by plotting his escape into city life with Yachi and Tanaka. They’re trivial things, nothing more than average teenage defiance, but Itomori is a small town with a small school and there’s only so much judgement from his peers that he can take.

Quaint, he thinks, is a good way to describe Itomori. And that’s what it is, with its worn-down paths and ivy-covered buildings. It’s quaint when he wakes up in his room every morning to sunlight filtering through the shoji panels, and when he meets with Yachi and Tanaka to walk to and from school. It’s quaint when everyone follows the same patterns day after day after day.

He hesitates to call it home, with his mother gone and his father absent. He hesitates to call it home, with the endless taunts about his height and hushed whispers about his father. Never mind the fact that he couldn’t hurt a fly despite his size, despite his power on one side of a volleyball net. Never mind the fact that he didn’t _ask _to be the mayor’s son. He has a hard time thinking of it as home when he and Yachi make constant plans to move to Tokyo after graduation, talking about the flat they’ll all share and the flowers they’ll press and hang on the walls. Tanaka humors them, throws in his own little wishes when the conversation lulls and Asahi stares off into the distance like he longs for something more than a small town with nothing worth seeing.

✩✩✩

The first time it happens, it feels more like a dream than anything. He thinks that’s all it is, despite Nana telling him the next morning that he seemed ‘back to normal today’. He tells her he didn’t go anywhere, but she just shakes her head with a smile that speaks of forgotten dreams and shoos him out the door. He brushes off the encounter until Tanaka comments on his ability to remember where the volleyball court is while Yachi sends him concerned glances. A memory flickers in the back of his mind, foggy and out of reach.

_It was an odd dream,_ he tells himself.

The unfamiliar script in his notebook and the ringing laughter from his classmates when the teacher calls him out for remembering his name and confuses him, but he brushes it off and continues on like normal.

He sits with Nana that night, braiding cords and ruminating over the writing in his notebook. He loses himself in the familiar motions, over and over and over again until she calls his name sharply. She tells him the history of the shrine, tells him why they still make kuchikamizake, then devolves into a rant about his father and politics. It’s familiar and warm, and his laughter ripples across the creek that runs beneath the shrine.

He doesn’t see the concerned looks Nana shoots him, or the relief in her eyes when he laughs.

✩✩✩

The second time it happens, he wakes up on the floor, staring at a ceiling that isn’t his. There’s an unfamiliar uniform hanging on the wall and a stinging pain in his back from falling off a bed that doesn’t belong to him. He stands up and finds he’s far closer to the ground than he’s used to being. The mirror in the bathroom shows him a stranger with teak eyes and dark brown hair with a small bleached section in the front. He’s stunned, and he swears he’s at least ten inches closer to the ground than he was when he went to bed. There’s a bandage on his cheek and broken skin across his knuckles, and he hisses in pain when he tries to touch both injuries.

_What the hell is going on?_

A text alert sounds from the phone on the bed, startling him from his thoughts.

_[Sugawara Koushi] 8:45am_

_ Better move your ass, Noya. Daichi has his angry face on!_

He gets lost no less than three times on the way to an unfamiliar school, even with the map on this Noya guy’s phone. He hovers nervously around what he hopes is Noya’s classroom when he finally gets to the school at lunchtime.

“Noya! Can’t believe you actually showed up,” calls a voice from behind him. He turns around to see another teenager with amber eyes and striking silver hair.

“Ah, Sugawara?” he guesses.

Sugawara makes a face. “We’ve been over this how many times? _Suga,_ please. You’re killing me.” He slings an arm around Asahi’s shoulders and steers him away from the classroom, claiming Daichi is waiting.

Daichi is, in fact, waiting for them when they get to the roof. He glares at them with dark eyes, and Asahi is reminded, just for a moment, of his father. But then Daichi smiles and lobs an extra sandwich at him, and the image is blown away.

Suga asks him why he was late, and he scrambles to find an excuse before just blurting out that he got lost. Daichi pokes the bandage on his cheek and tells him to quit joking around. Asahi doesn’t correct them, even fights to contain his excitement when they suggest going to a café after school.

After spending a frankly obscene amount of money on food at a local café, a message pings his phone to say he has a shift at work. He asks Suga and Daichi where he works and receives only exasperated looks and groans in response. They ask if he’s feeling okay. He tells them he’s not sure because really, he’s not. He’s beginning to think he might not actually be dreaming, though he can’t exactly tell Noya’s friends that.

Asahi decides very quickly that Noya lives in a nightmare. He works in a high-class restaurant that serves Italian food—a constant stream of fast people and faster service. He’s yelled at no less than three times within the first two hours, but he manages to make it through the rush.

It’s during a lull in service that it happens. Kiyoko—one of the other servers—is caught around the wrist by one particularly rowdy customer demanding her attention and phone number. Asahi steps in immediately, giving a manic grin when the man tries to tell him off. It works better than expected, and the man leaves. Kiyoko thanks him profusely when he walks her home, and he tells her it’s no trouble.

He finds a journal while going through Noya’s phone that night, as well as several pictures of him and Kiyoko together. Maybe unrequited love? He documents his day in Noya’s journal for him to read later on before yawning and laying on the bed. They can figure out the switching later.

* * *

Nishinoya Yuu lives his life in the fast lane. He takes high-speed trains across a high-speed city to a high-speed school and a high-speed job. He is always moving, always going, always letting everything pass him by in a blur of light and sound. It’s a good life and he’s got good friends. Suga and Daichi and Kiyoko are his anchors, his steady ports in the chaos of downtown Tokyo. He lives fast and free and loves it all.

Sometimes, though, when he’s sitting at his desk with a sketchpad in hand and the night is finally quiet, he can’t help but wish that things could just slow down.

The first time it happens, he wakes up to birdsong and the smell of miso soup. He stretches languidly in the morning sun, shivering when his feet hit open air. He assumes it’s nothing more than being tangled in the blankets until he opens his eyes to baby blue sheets and his head much closer to the floor than he’s used to. When he stands, he finds that he’s much further away from the ground than usual.

It’s an entirely disorienting experience, lucid dreaming. Still, he plays along with the stage the dream lays out for him. He’s greeted in the kitchen by an older woman with laughter lines and eyes far wiser than they appear. She calls him over, sits him down on the zabuton cushions, and twirls his shoulder-length hair into a messy bun. She pushes him out the door and off to school with a knowing smile and a whispered _hold on to your dreams._

He thinks nothing of it until he feels the very real embarrassment of sitting in the wrong desk three separate times. Two people he assumes are this Asahi guy’s friends—Tanaka and Yachi, according to the teacher—ask him if he’s feeling okay. That’s about the time he starts to think that maybe this isn’t a dream. So he flips to a blank page in the notebook on his desk and writes in big, bold letters

_Who are you?_

* * *

They figure out by the third switch that it’s not a dream and it’s not going to stop. It’s a disaster, the first few times. They only switch a few times a week, but it’s still enough to throw them for a loop every time it happens. Leading another life isn’t always easy, and it’s a hard lesson that they learn together in journal entries on their phones and concerned looks from their friends.

Noya stops Asahi from getting harassed by classmates, using his size to his advantage. He perfects his own glare on Asahi’s face and uses it on anyone who tries to taunt him for his height or his father. He talks with Nana, learns how Asahi’s mother had passed and how his father had abandoned him, abandoned their shrine. He gets confessions from several people and tells Asahi in a journal entry to get it together and get a girlfriend. He climbs a mountain path with Nana and two bottles of kuchikamizake and stares in awe at a small stone shrine in the middle of a crater filled with flowers and small creeks. She tells him about magic hour, about musubi, about the true origins of the Twilight Festival coming up. He imagines he can hear bells on the wind when she asks him if he’s dreaming.

Asahi enjoys the fast-paced life Noya is so used to in Tokyo. He learns that Noya and Kiyoko are childhood friends, that they’ve always had each other’s backs. He gets good at Noya’s nightmare job and spends way too much money on café snacks, much to Noya’s irritation. He witnesses the obvious pining between Suga and Daichi, learns how good Noya is at drawing, leaves little doodles of his own in the corners of Noya's sketchbook. He decides that Noya works too hard, and plans a day trip with Kiyoko to Tokyo Tower and an art museum. Of course, he doesn’t get to go, but he hopes that Noya gets to enjoy it, even if there’s a pit in his stomach at the thought.

Asahi decides the next day to call the number in his phone the next day. _Nishinoya Yuu._ Maybe he’s crazy enough to invite Noya to the Twilight Festival with him tomorrow night, or maybe he’s just hoping that he’ll be able to calm the churning pit in his stomach when he thinks of Noya and Kiyoko together.

* * *

_The number you have dialed is outside the cellular network._

It’s a message he gets three times before he finally decides to just go to Tokyo himself. He overthinks the entire train ride, going back and forth between _yes_ and _no_ and hopeful and distraught. Will Noya want to see him? Will he even care?

He walks around the city for hours, calling and texting and wishing. There’s a pit in his stomach that feels too much like fear for his liking. His calls never connect. His messages never go through.

He tells himself it’s okay, that there’s always another chance. Except he can’t quite convince himself, can’t quite get rid of the fear in his gut that churns with every step. It takes all day, but he finally stops searching and resigns himself to going home. It’s not until he’s sitting on a bench at the train station that he has any luck. He goes from sitting to sprinting in half a second, chasing after those eyes he knows so well and praying he’s fast enough.

He makes it, but just barely. The crowd shifts around him, stepping to the side when he passes until Noya is right in front of him, nose buried in flashcards.

It’s him but it’s not him. His face is softer, rounder than it is when Asahi looks in the mirror through his eyes, hair laying flat with no bleached section hanging in front of his eyes. Had he dyed it since the last time they switched?

_Noya._

_Noya._

_Noya._

“Hm?” He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until wide brown eyes slowly track upwards to meet his. They’re as familiar as the threads of the braided cord in his hair, yet just as different as the city streets he’s been searching all day. This is Noya, but this is not _his_ Noya. He’s not sure what’s changed.

“It’s me.” The words come out softer than he means them to, and he tugs on a loose strand of hair in embarrassment. “Don’t…don’t you remember?” His gut clenches, fear and concern tangling together in his throat. It’s all he can do to keep a straight face as Noya raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry, do I know you?”

Every emotion he’d bottled up until now comes crashing down inside his chest. He’s been gutted—stripped bare and razed to ash with five little words. His fingers tangle in the bottom of his shirt as the train lurches. He sees the woman in front of him step back to keep her balance, but he’s still knocked breathless when Noya is forced closer, pressing almost entirely into his side to avoid being squished. His throat closes faster than his eyes, and he almost puts a hand to his chest to see if it’s as hollow as it suddenly feels.

He knows what’s different now. The missing bleached section of hair, the lack of spikes, even the less-worn school bag on Noya’s back all paint a very clear picture of what he refused to acknowledge the moment he started chasing the train car. In the end, he supposes it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change anything.

_He doesn’t know me._

An automated voice announces their arrival at the next station. He steps back, steps off, goes to walk away.

“Wait!”

He turns back around and catches those eyes with his own again. Noya’s face is painted three different shades of confusion—furrowed brows, downturned mouth, eyes glittering with something that has no name. He’s already reaching for the cord in his hair when Noya forms his next words.

“What’s your name?”

“Asahi!” He tugs the cord free completely. There’s several people between them now, but Noya manages to catch the other end of it, holding tight and wrapping it around his hand like it’s something precious. A piece of Asahi’s heart dislodges itself, traveling up and making a home in the hollow of his throat. _Please don’t forget. _“My name is Asahi!”

He loses sight of Noya in the rush of people that crowd the train doors, and he can’t help the tears that gather in his eyes. This isn’t how he’d planned on this trip going. He’d hoped...well. He’s not sure what he’d been hoping for, exactly.

The train door closes.

_Please don’t forget._

Asahi goes home. He cuts off most of his hair, because his braided cord is in the city (maybe his heart is, too) and he can’t picture himself with a ponytail any more than he can picture his mother’s face. He goes to school, brushes off the concerned looks from Yachi and Tanaka, and tries to get excited about the Twilight Festival.

The next night, he stands in horror as the comet Itomori had been so excited for splits apart and comes falling down in violent shards of starlight. He hears a bell, maybe, somewhere in the distance or somewhere in his mind.

And then he hears nothing at all.

* * *

Noya documents his day in his journal. He talks about the disastrous trip with Kiyoko—the way she laughed when he tripped going up the stairs and the concern in her gaze when he stopped before a wall of pictures about a town destroyed by the comet three years ago. Then he writes it all down by hand and lays it on his desk, because he knows Asahi doesn’t always read his journal entries, but he _always_ checks the doodles on Noya’s desk. He can’t wait to read Asahi’s reaction.

Except he never does, because the switches stop. He doesn’t notice at first; there’s usually a few days between their switches, after all. By the end of the week, he knows something’s wrong.

There’s a number saved in Noya’s phone that he’s never dared look at before. There’s a name attached, he knows. Ten digits and a name. _Azumane Asahi._ Does he dare?

He does. Of course he does. Noya never backs down from anything, and finding out why the switches stopped is no different. Asahi had mentioned something about a comet, though Noya never did figure out what he meant. He’ll ask when he calls.

Noya thinks of the stars. He thinks of journal entries in his phone not written by him, of well-intentioned meddling in his doomed love life, of silly notes scrawled into the crook of his elbow and the arches of his feet when he wakes up in the morning. Something in his chest tightens—a fragile thing he has no name for.

_The number you have dialed is outside the cellular network._

But that can’t be right, can it? He curses himself for not getting the name of Asahi’s town. It can’t be that far though. He recognized the mountains, after all. It’s not far enough to be unreachable. He tries again, if only to settle the anxiety wrapping like vines around his lungs.

_The number you have dialed is outside the cellular network._

Where does he go from here?

✩✩✩

The answer, as it turns out, is simple. Or at least, it’s simple in theory.

He draws Asahi’s hometown almost entirely from memory—every path, every vine-covered building, every cracked sidewalk branded into his memory as if he’d never left. He scours the internet for small towns in different mountain ranges across the country, adjusts his drawings until they’re just right, and prays that he’ll somehow discover the name of the small town that feels like home.

It takes him thirteen days, but he does it. A near-perfect rendering of the town. So Noya gathers the finished drawing and his various sketches, stuffs them in a backpack, tightens the cord around his wrist, asks Suga to cover for him with his parents, and buys a train ticket.

He’s stunned when Suga and Kiyoko meet him at the station, bags packed and comebacks ready for every one of his protests. Suga says Daichi is covering his shift at work, and Kiyoko says that he’s not going traipsing off across the country without her. It’s a futile fight he was never going to win, so he resigns himself to having two travel companions and sets off.

Kiyoko and Suga berate him for not really knowing anything about this town, about Asahi, about anything really. They call him a terrible tour guide, and he laughs along with them, even though something in his head is screaming _this isn’t right, something’s wrong._ He misses the concerned looks they share behind his back.

Luck, Noya thinks, has never really been on his side.

It’s not until they stop at a ramen shop in late afternoon that he learns anything useful. They’re in the middle of nowhere, nothing but empty roads and tiny shops for miles in each direction. It’s on the suggestion of an elderly woman that they’d even come this far out. Everything changes when the shop owner sees his sketch. She says the town is called Itomori, and that her husband grew up there. The vines around his lungs loosen their hold.

He ignores Suga and Kiyoko’s protests and begs the shop owner—Ukai—to take him there. He’s giddy, hopeful, lost in his joy and too blind to see the apprehension on his friends’ faces. They go with him anyway, whispering in the backseat and sending him looks he can’t see.

_Itomori_. He knows where it is now. He knows his way around. He’s walked its paths in someone else’s shoes. He’ll find Asahi when he gets there.

✩✩✩

Itomori is a wasteland.

It’s nothing like what he knows. It’s destroyed, wiped off the map by a falling star. Everything in Noya is screaming no, _no this can’t be right, _but the proof is right in front of him. Itomori is gone, and the only thing left standing is ashes and rubble scattered across overlapping half-moon lakes.

He’s gone.

The vines dig their thorns into his lungs, cutting deep and cutting off his air. He can’t _breathe_, can’t see through the tears in his eyes, can’t think beyond the echo of a name he’d never allowed past his lips.

_Asahi._

_Asahi._

_Asahi._

He turns sharply when Kiyoko calls his name, and he’s not sure if the step back she takes is in fear or because she sees the raw, searing pain in his eyes. He pulls his phone from his pocket with shaking fingers, because if he has nothing else left, he still has Asahi’s notes.

They vanish before his eyes, symbols and words twisting into unrecognizable streaks until he’s staring at a blank screen.

Nishinoya Yuu falls to his knees.

✩✩✩

Ukai takes them to the local library at Noya’s request. He digs up all the information he can find on Itomori. Kiyoko tells him that the comet hit the town while people were gathered for the Twilight Festival in town that night, and Suga tells him what time the comet split and where it landed.

At 7:31, on the third shelf of the left side of the small library, they find a book with the names of the victims.

At 7:36, Noya finds two names. _Tanaka Ryuunosuke_ and _Yachi Hitoka_.

At 7:42, he freezes over the name _Azumane Asahi. _Kiyoko tells him it’s impossible, that there’s no way this is who he’s been searching for. He tells her she’s wrong, that he remembers everything. He remembers—

—what?

And that’s the thing. He can’t remember. There was… something. Something important. Some_one_ important. And _he can’t remember._

Kiyoko and Suga help him take a few of the books over to the inn next door. They book a room. Noya wracks his brain for a name he wasn’t supposed to forget and flips through a book Suga brought about braided cords. The vines in his chest crawl between his ribs, tightening their hold ever so slightly. Kiyoko sits with him while he reads, asks him where he got the cord around his wrist. He tells her someone gave it to him, three years ago on a train when he was young and still trying to balance school with life.

...who was it?

He stares at it, running his fingers across the intricate design. Red to orange to blue to orange to red again. He’s kept it all this time, worn it every day, but who…?

_(What’s your name?)_

_(Asahi.)_

He doesn’t notice Kiyoko leave, doesn’t hear the conversation she has with Suga, doesn’t notice them both come back to the room and fall asleep. He repeats the name on loop in his head. _Asahi. Asahi. Asahi._ He forms a plan, leaves a note telling his friends to go back to Tokyo without him, and tries to get a few hours of sleep.

He leaves long before dawn and somehow convinces Ukai to drive him to the base of a mountain trail. He’s gifted a bento, a compliment about his drawing, and a look that’s colored with the barest shades of hope. Maybe Ukai doesn’t know what he’s going to do, what he’s desperately hoping he _can_ do, but the look he gives Noya is enough to tighten the vines just a little more. He chokes out his thanks when he takes the bento, gives a short bow, and watches Ukai’s truck disappear.

Then he’s alone, and it takes him far too long to catch his breath, far too long to pull back the tears threatening to fall. He’s too late. He _knows_ he’s too late, but if there’s even a _chance_ that he can fix this, he has to try. For Itomori. For Yachi. For Tanaka. For Nana.

For Asahi.

(Maybe for himself, too.)

✩✩✩

_“Asahi, do you know about Musubi?”_

_ “No, Nana. Tell me about it?”_

_ “Musubi is the knot we use in our braided cords. It means to bring together, to connect, to unite. The threads of life are musubi, as are the threads of love. Sometimes the threads break, untangle. But they always reconnect in one form or another, even if it takes a little work. Twilight is the time when the barrier between this world and the spirit world is the thinnest, and that is where musubi comes from.”_

_ “Nana?”_

_ “Hm?”_

_ “Do you think that musubi can connect two people who have never met?”_

_ “Asahi.”_

_ “Yes, Nana?”_

_ “Are you dreaming right now?”_

✩✩✩

It takes Noya half the day to get up the mountain. He goes slowly, plots his path to make sure he doesn’t get lost anywhere, and makes sure he stops to eat. It starts to rain halfway through, and by the time he crests the lip of the crater that holds the Azumane shrine’s relic, he’s soaked through.

It takes his breath away, if only for a moment.

He’d hoped, had even prayed, but to actually see the shrine with his own eyes almost brings him to his knees. It’s different, of course. It’s been three years since he was here, walking this same path in Asahi’s shoes. But the shrine is still _here._ _He still has a chance_.

There’s more space in the crater than he remembers, and he has to hold his bag over his head to keep it from plunging into the frigid water he crosses to get to the shrine. It’s slow going, and he slips in the soft silt of the riverbed more than once in his rush to get to the entrance. He’s shaking by the time he gets to the moss-covered stairs, though whether it’s from the cold or the nerves, he can’t tell. He takes a deep breath.

Every step down is another memory he swears he won’t forget.

_Asahi’s laugh, always just a little off because Noya’s voice isn’t as deep._

Step.

_Asahi’s Nana, somehow always knowing when Noya is there and struggling to fill such tall shoes._

Step.

_Asahi protecting Kiyoko at work. _

Step.

_Laughing with Yachi and Tanaka when Noya knocked over a desk during art class to stop the jeers of classmates he didn’t really know. No one messed with Asahi after that._

Step.

_Asahi spending all his money on silly cafe snacks._

Step.

_Asahi._

It’s dark at the bottom of the stairs, light filtering in only dimly from the cloudy skies. It’s still raining, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is flipping on his flashlight, sitting on the cold, rocky ground, and lifting the bottle of kuchikamizake. Nana said it was half of the person who made it. Half of Asahi.

He wipes off the moss, unties a red cord so similar to the one around his wrist. Pours a bit out.

The liquid glitters. Starlight given substance.

_Musubi,_ echoes Nana in his head, three years ago on a mountaintop when he was wearing someone else’s skin.

_Please,_ he begs, sitting on the same mountaintop and praying he can go back. _Please, just give me one more chance._

He drinks.

✩✩✩

Nothing happens.

He holds his breath, thinks that maybe it’s just taking a while.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Nothing.

There is nothing and he _burns._ He curses himself, curses time for being against them, curses musubi, curses Asahi for leaving him. His chest _aches,_ fierce and fragile and ripping him up beneath layers of cloth and skin and bone.

He exhales one last time, drags himself to his feet. The light from his phone reflects off worn stone and mossy white bottles filled with hope and broken promises.

He steps on the edge of a stone with too much water on it, falls down as the light in his hand rises up to illuminate the painting he hadn’t seen the first time. A star, falling on a mountain.

_The comet,_ he thinks, in the split second before his back hits the ground and he falls straight through.

He doesn’t scream, rendered mute by what flashes before his eyes.

_A mother, whispering soft words into dark auburn hair. _

_ A funeral, dark and somber on an old dirt road. _

_ A father, screaming before walking away. A little boy, sliding down a wall with tears in his eyes._

_ A grandmother, picking up the pieces._

_ The same boy, getting on a train. He knows where it goes. _

_ Eyes, meeting for the first time._

_ A cord, thrown between train doors and rushing crowds. _

_ A name, spoken across years._

_Asahi, standing in a field with too-short hair and horror-struck eyes._

Noya finds his voice, yanks it up from the depths of his shock and _screams_. He screams for Asahi to run, screams for him to listen, to _get out before it’s too late_.

A bell tolls inside the void, a dissonant reverberation that shakes him to his core.

Everything goes dark.

✩✩✩

He jack-knifes awake with a gasp, heart throbbing an unsteady rhythm in his chest. Shaking hands carve rigid paths along his skull and he presses his face into his knees, yanking on nothing.

On _nothing._

He stops breathing. _Oh._ He dares to lift his head, dares to open his eyes slowly, dares to acknowledge the hope burning a hole in his throat.

Sunlight casts a soft glow through _shoji_ screens, illuminating calloused hands and the soft-skinned arches of feet tangled in baby blue sheets. He knows these hands, knows they pack power on a volleyball court despite their gentleness everywhere else. He knows these feet, distinctly remembers writing a very elegant _fuck your classmates_ there all those weeks ago. He sobs once—a wrecked, broken sound that shudders between lips he knows almost as well as his own.

Noya allows himself two minutes to revel in the wonder that it _worked_ before standing up. He’ll have time to be excited later. For now, there are plans to be made.

He gets dressed and makes his way to the kitchen. He frowns at the newscaster saying the comet would reach its zenith tonight. He still has time, then.

“Asahi?” calls a voice from behind him. He startles, turning around to meet familiar, warm eyes.

“Hi, Nana,” he breathes, wrapping her in a firm hug. Asahi’s arms are long, strong enough to wrap all the way around her and hold on tightly, gently, because Nana is something precious to him. Maybe to Noya, too.

She hugs him back, soft and warm. If she notices the way his voice breaks, she says nothing.

✩✩✩

Yachi and Tanaka stare at him in equal parts amazement and confusion when he says the comet will destroy Itomori. Yachi asks if he’s feeling okay, and Tanaka asks him what the hell happened to his hair. He tells them it doesn’t matter, tells them to _listen_. Maybe it’s the fire in his eyes or the desperation in his voice, but they do.

Yachi goes on a supply run while he and Tanaka devise a plan to keep everyone away from the Twilight Festival. It’s foolproof, really. Tanaka will blow up something important at the electrical substation and kill the power to the whole town. Noya will convince the mayor—Asahi’s father—that the threat of destruction is real. Yachi will use the town broadcasting system from the high school to get the districts in the impact zone to evacuate by claiming wildfires. It’s perfect. They can’t fail.

He points out key places on a map unfolded between the three of them. Yachi catches his gaze across their makeshift table, something like doubt passing across her face. She asks him if he’s sure about this, if this isn’t just a theory. He thinks of a trip taken to a town he didn’t know, of names in a thick black book, and of waking up to _shoji_ screens in a small town.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.”

Tanaka takes the chance to chime in about how Itomori Lake was formed by another comet falling over a thousand years ago. Noya remembers a wall painting in a shrine cave at the top of a mountain and grins, giving Tanaka a fist bump. Their plan is set. They can’t fail. They _won’t_ fail.

✩✩✩

The mayor is not someone Noya would consider imposing. He is entirely average in every way—not too tall or short, nose sitting perfectly centered in the middle of his face, hair and eyes just straddling the border between black and brown. He is normal and unimpressive in every way.

At least, he is until he opens his mouth. Lips part to spit fire and vitriol in the face of impending disaster. He tells his son to shut up, tells him he must be sick, and he’ll call the doctor, and Noya sees red. He comes forward, yanks on a tie the color of Asahi’s eyes and half-snarls a _listen here you stupid son of a bitch_. He is burning, full of protective fury and fear and memories of five hundred names in a thick black book hidden in the back of a small library.

Asahi’s father stops. His dark eyes widen, then narrow. Noya lets go of his tie and steps back, something not unlike guilt twisting up in his throat. _Asahi wouldn’t want this_. It’s all he can think, taking half-steps back until he’s too far to see the stricken look in the mayor’s eyes.

He’s already out the door by the time the question hits his ears.

_Who are you?_

It echoes in his ears when he meets with Yachi and Tanaka at the end of the road. Yachi asks him how it went, and his voice shakes the barest amount when he tells her that he failed. He wonders if Asahi would have been able to convince his father.

_Asahi._ The name strikes him, clear as a bell. If the kuchikamizake had really worked, then Asahi should be at the mountaintop. He tells Yachi and Tanaka to go on with the plan and takes off at a dead sprint, thanking every deity he can think of for Asahi’s long legs and endurance drills at volleyball practice.

He prays he’s fast enough.

* * *

Asahi wakes up alone.

It’s cold and dark and pain is crashing in waves from his head to the backs of his knees. Except, when he stands, he realizes it’s not his head that hurts. He’s in Noya’s body again, somewhere dark and damp and freezing. It’s when he steps out into the sunlight that he realizes where, exactly, he’s standing.

But what is Noya doing at the shrine relic?

Asahi makes his way up the hill to the lip of the crater, thanking Noya silently for wearing decent hiking shoes. His throat is tight, though, and he knows he probably won’t switch with Noya again. Not after yesterday, not after—

He feels the exact moment his heart stops dead in his chest.

A choked sound escapes his throat—weak and broken and full of disbelief. His eyes have to be failing him, because there is no way that what he’s seeing is right. It should be here, right in front of him at the edge of a crater on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. There should be a small town surrounding a beautiful lake. There should be his _home._

Instead, he’s left staring at two overlapping lakes and nothing more than ash where Itomori once stood. It’s gone, it’s _gone_ and he can’t_ breathe_ around the hole in his chest—half the size of the hole where his home used to be and twice as wide.

_“No,”_ he says, a shattered, wrecked sound that barely sounds like a word. His chest _aches_, flashes of a falling star and the sound of bells bouncing around in his head.

_Please,_ he begs to no one. He can’t take his eyes off the crater, struggling to breathe, struggling to comprehend the enormity of what he’s seeing. Nails dig into his palms but he doesn’t feel it, can’t feel anything or hear anything except the screaming in his head. _Yachi, Tanaka, Nana, his dad, oh god no no no no NO._

Azumane Asahi falls to his knees.

✩✩✩

_Asahi!_

His head jerks up at the call of his name, twin lakes glittering behind him. He knows that voice. It comes again, ringing in his ears like a bell. Asahi stands on shaking legs that don’t belong to him. Something in his chest pulls tight enough to stop his breath in his lungs.

“Noya!” The name erupts from his lips, cracked in all the wrong places and shattered in the middle. “Where are you?”

He runs, calling for Noya the whole time. He almost can’t believe Noya is _here_, close enough for him to hear, almost close enough for him to touch. And really, that’s all he wants. He wants to see Noya—_his_ Noya—with his own eyes, thank him with his own mouth for everything. Tell him—

“Asahi!”

“Noya?”

The sun sinks behind the clouds, casting everything in shadowed shades of gold. _Magic hour_, Nana always calls it.

He blinks.

* * *

It’s quiet, this meeting on a mountaintop between two strangers who aren’t really strangers. There’s no fanfare, no tolling of bells or explosions of light. It’s a calm meeting of eyes, a sharing of soft smiles and broken laughs.

Asahi speaks first, tells him how he never imagined such small hands could hold so much power over his life. He’s _here_, standing hunched over because he doesn’t want to seem intimidating. Noya knows this, has imagined it in the notes they leave each other. But seeing it for himself makes something in his chest pull too tight.

He tells Asahi about the comet, words spilling from his lips too fast to keep track of, but Asahi understands. His eyes glitter like stardust and Noya knows he’ll get everyone out. He doesn’t mention the library or the books or the icy, heart-wrenching _fear_ he’d felt upon seeing Itomori destroyed. Standing on the lip of a crater above a shrine with twin lakes at their backs, he imagines Asahi knows that fear all too well.

He pulls a marker from his jacket, tells Asahi they should write each other’s names down just in case they forget again. He goes first, writes the words on Asahi’s palm with shaking hands, closes his fingers around them before he can think about it too much. Asahi goes next, drawing a single line across his palm. The light disappears.

The marker falls to the ground. A bell tolls.

Asahi is gone.

_Please don’t forget._

* * *

_I won’t forget._

Asahi repeats it to himself over and over again. He repeats it when Tanaka shows up on his moped with a duffel bag full of explosives. He repeats it when they blow the substation and power to the whole town goes out. He repeats it when the generators come on and Yachi starts her announcements, claiming wildfires. She tells everyone to evacuate to the high school.

He repeats it as the pieces of their plan fall into place. It’s perfect. It’s moving, it’s working, and it can’t fail.

Except it does, and Asahi is left choking on his fear and memories of a name he can’t remember.

The mayor catches on. Yachi is removed from the broadcasting room at the school. Everyone is told to stay calm and remain where they are. Asahi burns, reckless hope crumbling to ashes in his throat. He’s _terrified,_ praying with everything in him that he won’t be too late to save the place he’d never dared consider home until now.

Tanaka snaps him out of it with a yank on his short, screams at him to _go_, to convince his father.

He runs.

_I won’t forget._

He repeats it as he runs to his father’s office, faster than he ever has before. He trips, skidding across a loose rock in the road. It hurts like hell. The skin on his knees and arms tears under torn-up cracks in the street no one had ever bothered to fix, but he doesn’t care because he made a promise to himself to save everyone, a promise to keep them safe.

He made a promise to save himself, too. A promise to someone important. A promise to—

—who?

The words on his hand stare back at him, and for a moment he can’t comprehend anything. There’s supposed to be a name. _His_ name, the one Asahi is supposed to remember.

_I love you,_ it says instead.

He picks himself up. He swears he’ll remember. He can’t forget someone so important to him.

He runs.

* * *

Azumane Suteshi has never been what anyone would call _patient._ He has no patience for the Azumane shrine that his wife loved so much, because it reminds him too much of everything he’s lost. He has no patience for his mother-in-law, who glares at him with a horrible combination of anger and pity. He has no patience for the people who look at him like he’s fragile, like he broke into little pieces after Ayumi’s death. He has no patience for the judgemental stares from the people of Itomori when he reprimands his son for the way he acts. He has an image to uphold as mayor, after all.

No, Azumane Suteshi is not a patient man. So when his son storms into his office for the second time in six hours, he is ready to loosen the leash on his temper.

Except he doesn’t, because Asahi walks in with fire in his eyes and ash on his clothes, skin split in more places than Suteshi can count, and tells him to issue an evacuation order. He’s prepared a whole list of arguments, including the absurd involvement of Asahi’s two friends. But Asahi stops them with a single look, delivers the same sentence in the same even tone.

And maybe it’s the pull in his gut when his son opens his mouth, or the way that he looks into eyes exactly like Ayumi’s, but Suteshi, for maybe the first time in his life, listens to his son.

When the comet above Itomori splits, he can only stare at Asahi and ask him how he knew. Asahi says nothing, just stares at smudged marker on the palm of his right hand.

* * *

Nishinoya Yuu wakes up alone on a mountaintop. He doesn’t know why.

There is a line of smudged marker on his palm. He thinks it might be from the map in his pocket. He must have drawn on himself. He doesn’t know why he even came up here, much less by himself.

He wipes the marker off, climbs down the mountain path, and takes a train back to Tokyo.

He forgets.

✩✩✩

He feels like something is missing when he wakes up every morning. There’s a hole in his chest, ever-present and ever-growing. Some mornings bring the hollow, aching loneliness that lingers for days, while others bring salty tears and watercolor dreams he can’t quite remember. The hole stays there, wrapped in vines and stuck somewhere between his lungs. It stays with him through job interviews, through the endless back-and-forth on the trains, through days and nights that drag on just a little too long.

It's there when he walks through the rain and catches a fleeting glimpse of red intertwined in dark auburn strands. The hollow in his chest pulls ever so slightly—just enough to make him turn his head and look. The other person doesn’t turn around, so he shakes it off and continues on his way home.

It’s there when he meets Kiyoko for lunch and she asks him how he is. He tells her he’s fine, asks her about the ring on her finger. She tells him about her fianceé, a pretty blonde from a small town with a big heart and a bigger smile. He tells her he’s happy for her. They walk through the city and talk about nothing and everything, about a trip to the mountains and a tiny ramen shop in the middle of nowhere for a reason they can’t recall. He hugs her when they part, and she tells him she hopes he finds his happiness. The hole in his chest grows a bit larger.

It’s there when he meets Suga and Daichi for coffee at the café they like to frequent. They talk about work, tease him about his interview suit, admire the design of the ceiling like they haven’t been doing it for years. It’s familiar, and he has to remind himself that he’s content with his life, if not entirely happy. He even smiles when he catches them holding hands under the table, telling Daichi it took him long enough to confess. Daichi chokes on his coffee, but the look on his face when Suga laughs is worth the bruise forming on his shin. He’s happy for them, even as the ache in his lungs makes it hard to breathe.

✩✩✩

There’s a distinct shift when he stops for food one night. There’s a chill in the air, one that speaks of colored leaves and festivals at twilight. He sips at the drink in his hands while he waits in line, letting the warmth seep through his skin and down to his bones. The short blonde in front of him is berating the man with her about his best man suit for her wedding, and he loses himself in their banter. It’s not until the words _calm down, Yachi_ leave the man’s lips that he jolts.

Yachi. Why does that sound so familiar? He must have spoken the words, because when he looks up again, Yachi and her companion are staring at him. His breath catches in his throat and he stumbles back half a step. He knows them. He_ knows _them.

Doesn’t he?

He thinks he hears Yachi’s friend ask if he’s okay, but he can’t be sure. He’s already backing away, his heart pounding a staccato beat inside his chest.

He runs and runs and runs and doesn’t stop until he’s on a bridge overlooking the city. The hole in his chest is a void, gaping and sucking in every overwhelming thought and feeling that tries to rise up. Forgotten watercolor dreams hover just outside his memory, and he reaches for them desperately, hands locked in a death grip on the metal bar of a bridge he’d stood on five years ago trying to call a number he can’t recall. There’s _something,_ he knows. He can remember if he tries. He just has to—

_(The number you have dialed is outside the cellular network.)_

—forget.

With shaking fingers, he takes out his phone and dials a number.

“Hello?” A female voice answers. He releases a breath.

“Kiyo, what did you say your fianceé’s name was?” He knows his voice is trembling, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Uh. Hitoka. Yachi Hitoka,” she says. “Noya, are you okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Kiyo. I just forgot.”

They say their goodbyes, though he can tell she’s worried for him. She doesn’t push and he doesn’t explain, but it’s fine, because he’s not going crazy. He’d remembered the name because Kiyoko told him. He’d probably seen their faces somewhere before, on the train or somewhere in the city. He’d freaked out over nothing. He tells himself that’s all it is, takes a few deep, calming breaths, and goes to bed early that night.

✩✩✩

He’s forgotten the encounter the next morning, and gets on the train to head to an early interview. It’s early enough that condensation is still frosting over the windows. He doodles random shapes and figures until he runs out of space, then moves to drawing at eye-level.

Down, right, down, left. He draws a _torii_ gate from memory, though he’s not sure where the memory comes from. There certainly aren’t many Shinto shrines in downtown Tokyo. It’s when he swipes his finger across the last line of the gate that he sees the pair of brown eyes staring right at him from the train next to his own. _Brown eyes. Dark auburn hair. Red cord._

His heart stops dead in his chest.

The void expands.

A train passes between them.

_(Nana?)_

_(Hm?)_

_(Do you think that musubi can connect two people who have never met?)_

It’s a strange thing, he thinks, running in the rain. It seems to hit his skin faster than it falls from the sky. Maybe it’s not falling very fast at all. Or maybe he’s just running too fast to notice, barreling around corners and vaulting over puddles. He maps the trains’ exit points in his head and prays they both thought the same thing.

The rain stops just as he comes to the bottom of a stone staircase. The other man stands atop it, staring at him like he’s a ghost. They look away in the same moment, and Noya is _scared. _He takes the steps slow, memorizing the shape of calloused hands and sturdy arms out of the corner of his gaze.

They pass one another. The void in his chest is a black hole now, screaming out and dragging him down until he’s barely breathing on stone stairs and he still hasn’t _said anything, damnit._ He grips the railing at the top and turns around, an endless loop of _I know you, I know you, I know you_ playing in his head. He watches dark auburn hair glimmer in the sunlight, red cord gleaming, and he knows. He knows he has to say something but oh _god_ he’s so scared; he’s fucking _terrified,_ but his name is Nishinoya Yuu and he doesn’t back down from a challenge so he takes a breath and opens his mouth and—

“Wait!”

The man freezes, long legs hovering in a half-taken step and a white-knuckled grip around the strap of the sports bag hanging at his hip.

“I’m sorry, I just. I.” _Fuck._ He breathes, tries again. “Have we met before?”

The other man turns around, and Noya swears there’s tears shining there.

“I thought so, too,” he says, and his voice is rough with some unspoken emotion. He smiles. The sun shines.

The hole in Noya’s chest closes up.

For the first time in eight years, he feels like he can breathe again.

_(What’s your name?)_

* * *

_ **Epilogue** _

As the years pass, he finds that he doesn’t wake up crying anymore. There’s a gentle sort of contentedness that’s seeped into every corner of his life. He doesn’t have to look up at the sky and wish things would slow down anymore. Time is a fluid, fickle thing, ever-changing and twisting to bring people together.

It’s too easy, he thinks, to get lost in the chaos of the so-called _bigger picture, _or the need to always be moving or _doing._ So he takes his time, enjoys the little moments, enjoys his friends and warmth that fills the hole in his chest after so many years.

He doesn’t think about that time much, even if Kiyoko and Yachi love hearing the story of how they met eyes on a train and fell hard and fast. He smiles and lets them believe that’s the whole story—even if, from time to time, he still dreams of falling stars and braided cords meetings on mountaintops. They’re only dreams, of course, slipping through his fingers whenever he tries to remember too much.

It doesn’t matter much, in the end. He’s happy now, and he sees the threads of that happiness everywhere he goes.

He sees them in shafts of sunlight streaming through the curtains every morning. He sees them in the steam rising from his coffee. He sees them in water rolling down train windows. He sees them in the stars that glitter in warm eyes every morning, in laughter that still makes his toes curl, in sleepy kisses pressed to soft hair and softer lips.

_Musubi,_ says his heart.

_I love you, _says his smile.

He chases these threads every day. They lead him to work, to friends, to cafés, to one end of the city and the other. No matter where he goes, though, the threads always lead him back to his focal point. They lead him back to bright laughter and brighter smiles, to whispered _I love you_s in the middle of the night.

They always lead him home.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: the only reason Noya wrote "fuck your classmates" on Asahi's foot instead of literally anywhere else is because he ran out of space bitching about how hard it is to make braided cords.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated <3
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/KirishiMom) | [Tumblr](https://the-bone-faerie.tumblr.com//) | [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.me/KirishiMom) | [Rec List](https://kirishimom.crd.co/#recs)


End file.
